


These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

by Imasupermuteant



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Coming of Age, Dragon!Stiles, Dragons, Gen, Humor, Magical Realism, Pack Cuddles, Pack Feels, Sort of? - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 14:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2696516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imasupermuteant/pseuds/Imasupermuteant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is a dragon. He hoards werewolves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

 

Stiles is pretty sure there’s something _in_ him, maybe some inherent part of his biology, that means nothing can ever go smoothly. With no looming threat on the horizon, and no interpersonal drama making everyone miserable, it only stands to reason that Stiles is due for some kind of major life crisis. In retrospect, he should have seen it coming.

The pack is stronger now. Closer. It was a little forced at first, but the last couple months of movie nights and pizza nights and surprisingly violent games of tag have finally consolidated their motley crew into, well, a pack. Even the non-werewolves feel it, and sometimes Stiles can even see it: the shiny and fragile threads of magic holding them together.

The result is that Stiles thinks nothing of spending his Friday night at Derek’s with all six werewolves (and affiliated non-werewolf entities), watching three ridiculously-violent horror movies and one equally-horrifying romantic comedy. They’re at it late enough that no one really wants to drive home, so they pile blankets and pillows on the floor of Derek’s tiny living room and lay down together. It’s a stunning display of mutual consensus that Stiles is slowly starting to get used to.

He grins sleepily at the pushing and bitching from his vantage point on the sofa, but eventually everyone gets settled, limbs intertwined and faces close enough to share breath. Even Derek deigns to curl up at the edge of the pile. He’s not touching anyone, but he’s close enough that he could if he wanted to, and he’s there. The last three times they’d done this, Derek had run off to his room and spent the night alone.

The important point, though, is that they’re all together, practically stacked on top of one another. And looking down at the lot of them from his perch makes Stiles feel-- _good_. Really good. Like putting down the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle and seeing the whole picture for the first time. Like settling into the most comfortable chair he's ever met. Like falling in love.

Without thinking, Stiles reaches down to gently push Erica’s arm to the left. That’s even more perfect. He can see the magic rise from the heap of them, making the room hazy and filling every one of Stiles’ senses. It smells like gold leaf and red velvet curtains, tastes like bells chiming, and for a moment Stiles is overwhelmed by the pure feeling of _rightness_. The soft glow of it feels like coming home.

This is just about the moment that Stiles realizes what’s happened. “Shit.”

He isn’t sure exactly what excuse he offers to get himself out of the apartment (Stomach ache? Sudden-onset homework?), but he’s in his Jeep and on the road before he fully grasps what it means to see-hear-feel the magic _coming from his friends_ as they lie knotted together.

“ _Shit!_ ” He slams his hands against the steering wheel and wishes he were literally anybody else. He has no contingency plan for this. He’d begun to doubt it would happen at all, never mind so suddenly and so soon. But Stiles has always been a little out of the ordinary, even when “ordinary” is left up to interpretation.

A little distance and some sleep, he tells himself, and all of this will go away.

Of course, since it’s Stiles, nothing can ever go smoothly. It’s probably in his DNA.

 

* * *

 

Stiles is six years old before he is allowed to go to kindergarten, even though all the other kids are five. Dad says that it’s because he needs to learn how to focus better, but Stiles and Mom both know that it has more to do with Their Secret. Having secrets is bad, but Their Secret isn’t _really_ bad because Mom and Dad know too, and because Bad Things could happen if Stiles accidentally tells.

In the year before he goes to kindergarten, Mom teaches Stiles a lot of things about Their Secret. She shows him how to see the lightsounds that mean magic is happening. She shows him how to keep his skin from looking shiny and red in the light. She shows him how to blow little rings of smoke, and she tells him that someday his smoke will be _real fire_. Which is _awesome_.

Mom takes Stiles flying so high that even planes and birds pass beneath them. When they’re high enough that no one will see, she lets her magic push her pale pink skin away and she becomes big and beautiful and Stiles sits on her shoulders and they go very, _very_ fast.

Sometimes Mom takes Stiles down to the basement and he gets to look at her collection. Mom likes books and clothes and music boxes, but most of her collection is pictures. She has _piles_ of them, almost to the ceiling in some places. Some of them are so old that Stiles is _not allowed_ to touch them because they will _fall apart_. Some of them are in frames or albums, although Mom says she likes it when they’re loose. Smiling faces and serene landscapes and blurry closeups of cats are stacked together with no apparent system, just the way they’re meant to be.

Stiles’ Dad bemoans the disarray of Mom’s collection—he says it’s a mess, but Stiles and Mom know there’s not a single photo out of place. Dad doesn’t always understand Their Secret. He can’t see magic, not even a little bit, and he doesn’t know that stuffing everything in boxes or (Stiles shudders at the thought) alphabetizing it would suffocate the blaze of energy.

Stiles helps Mom to arrange the collection, lifting glossy prints from the top of the pile and wedging them underneath old polaroids and cardstock portraits. Mom always knows what needs to be done, picking up each piece and inspecting it fondly before she slides it into place. She hums while she works, showing Stiles how the magic flows differently with every change. The tone and color and form of it shift with every addition, every change in placement.

The magic flows across his skin like a caress but doesn’t soak in like it does with Mom. It’s like a dance, and Stiles isn’t sure of the steps yet. He follows Mom’s orders exactly for fear that a wrong move will send the magic crashing down.

“It’s alright, _kochanie_ ,” Mom hums. “Someday you will have your own collection, and it will tell you what it needs to grow and glow.”

She kisses him right on the top of his head and they curl up together on top of the pile, feeling the magic sing to them and warm their bones. Mom tells him about the weeks before his birth, when she made a space for him at the center of the mound and the magic breathed life into his shell and made him real.

 

* * *

 

When the full magnitude of how _fucked_ he is settles in, Stiles pays a visit to his mother’s collection. It’s still in their basement, practically untouched aside from his infrequent attempts to keep things dusted and free of vermin. The magic has long since dried up; Stiles could never figure out how to shift the photographs in a way that kept it trapped, and the power dwindled as his mother’s illness robbed her of the strength and energy to tend it.

He’s hoped that maybe someday he would look at the mass of _stuff_ and suddenly see how it all fit together. Mom had always said that he wouldn’t feel the urge to hoard until after puberty, and with Stiles’ weird biology who even knew when that would strike? He’d never stopped hoping, though, that one day he would be be able to bring a little bit of his mom back by making her collection come alive once more.

Every now and then when he felt particularly stressed he’d try again, hoping that in that moment that it would all come together. And so, in the early hours of the morning after the fateful pack movie marathon, Stiles finds himself desperately sifting through stacks of photographs and the occasional cuckoo clock and praying for a single spark of magic.

As usual, Stiles feels nothing. He was never that interested in photography.

His father finds him after nearly three hours of desperate shuffling and cursing. Stiles is so startled to hear his footsteps that he nearly brains his father with a particularly heavy picture frame. Dad is saved from a concussion only by Stiles’ complete inability to hit a target.

“Jesus Christ, Stiles, what are you trying to do down here?” he asks when they’ve both recovered from the near miss. Stiles feels a momentary pang of guilt for causing his Dad to come down to the basement at all. He has the faintly exhausted look that means he’s thinking about Stiles’ Mom.

“It’s fine. Go back upstairs.” Stiles adjusts a few more frames in the fruitless hope that a spark of magic will ignite.

He tries to recapture the feeling from the other night, the way he somehow just _knew_ that shifting Erica to the left would make the whole pile of them come alive with magic. Surely if he can figure out how to make it work with sleeping teenagers he can do the same with Mom’s collection. There’s so much _more_ in Mom’s hoard, and it doesn’t have to get up to use the bathroom.

“This is not fine,” Dad says. “This actually seems a little bit nuts, kid. You’ve been down here for hours. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know--” Stiles pushes at the mound of--he can’t call it _treasure_ , without Mom’s love it’s just a heap of _stuff_ \--and wipes at his bleary eyes. “I thought I could pick up Mom’s collection and it--everything would be _so much easier_ , Dad. She loved this stuff, this was her treasure! Shouldn’t that make it treasure to me too?”

“Hey,” Dad says, climbing awkwardly over prints and albums to perch on the top with Stiles. “It _is_ treasure, alright? If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t have kept it down here for so long. Just because this stuff isn’t your _thing_ doesn’t mean we don’t value it. Right?”

Stiles sniffs. “Yeah.”

“Now, I don’t know too much about you and your Mom’s--" Dad waggles his fingers in a gesture that encapsulates Stiles’ entire species,  "--but I do know that you can’t force yourself to collect something that isn’t your thing, okay? When you figure out your thing, you’ll know it. From what your mom told me, it had something to do with, you know . . . with _growing up_. Do you catch my drift?”

Stiles presses the palms of his hands into his eyes until white lights burst behind his eyelids and let out groan of epic and adolescent proportions. “ _Yes_ , Dad, I catch your drift just fine.”

“And I get that you want to be as normal as possible given the circumstances, but I understand that, uh . . . _growing up_ isn’t going to happen for a decade or so yet, so I don’t think you should be worried about whether or not your mom’s stuff makes you feel right in your, uh--magic places?”

“Oh sweet Batman, please never say _magic places_ again.” If only the collection would spontaneously grow a mouth and swallow him whole. Stiles is sure that that would be less painful that the current conversation. “And please keep in mind that I am _your_ kid too and maybe my biological clock is a little faster than expected? By which I mean to say that I--I mean--I think I found _my thing_.”

“Oh,” says his Dad. Stiles looks up just long enough to see his father’s face turn slightly red. “Well then, son. What sort of thing is it?”

Stiles throws himself back onto the mound of photos and lets out a groan of defeat. “Fuck it, Dad. I think I want to hoard _people_.”

 

* * *

  

Mom can do all kinds of things that other moms are too stupid or not cool enough to do. She can make pizza in the oven at home that tastes better than the pizza that comes from the pizza place. She can make sandwiches that are shaped like animals or trucks. She can breathe fire that is so hot it comes out _blue_. She can sing songs better than the singers on the radio.

When Stiles is in first grade he proudly tells his teacher that his mom can fly higher than anyone else in his family, even Nanna. Ms. Mulligan laughs and compliments his imagination. Stiles wants to correct her. He only barely remembers in time that some of the things his mom can do are part of Their Secret.

Mom isn’t as big as Nanna or Grandpa when she takes off her softer skin and stretches her wings out, but she flies higher and faster and does magic that is just as strong.

Nanna and Grandpa don’t visit often. Stiles thinks it’s probably because they don’t like Dad very much. When they visit, they spend a lot of time talking about how small the basement is (“Your collection is _cramped_ , Claudia!”) and how big Stiles is (“He’s seven, you said? Isn’t he very tall? Have you seen a doctor?”). Mom says that they aren’t used to wearing their skin pink and small for so long and it makes them itchy, and being itchy makes them _grumpy._

When Mom gets sick, Nanna and Grandpa come and live with them for almost a year. They sort through Mom’s pictures with her, working to build up enough magic to keep the cancer away. So much magic collects in the basement that it escapes and billows around the house, twinkling in the corners and distracting Stiles from his homework. When Nanna and Grandpa aren’t downstairs with mom, they’re tutting over the state of the house and moving things around. It makes Dad frown whenever he’s not busy being sad about Mom. Stiles finds himself wishing they would just go home.

Nanna sometimes takes Stiles aside and asks him if he can feel the scales under his skin. She presses her fingers firmly against his back and makes a clicking noise with her tongue when she doesn’t feel any wings. Stiles makes smoke come out of his nose, and it makes his tummy feel sort of warm, but Nanna frowns when he shows her. She tries to show him how to breathe fire in the backyard. She demonstrates again and again how the magic flows in through her nose and out through her mouth, but he can’t seem to get the magic to go where it’s supposed to.

Nanna frowns, but then Stiles’ Mom calls him in for lemonade and cucumber slices and he forgets all about it.

 

* * *

 

Stiles knows that Dad has phoned Nanna because of the faint murmur of Polish from the kitchen and the crease of tension between his eyes when he sits down next to Stiles on the couch. He doesn’t mention her. Stiles assumes that, once again, she has refused to say anything to him whatsoever. Actually, Stiles is amazed that she even picked up the phone; it’s been five years since either of his grandparents has spoken a word to them.

“Well,” Dad finally sighs, “I’m not really sure what to say here.”

“Thanks for your honesty,” Stiles mutters from under his blanket. He’s been watching terrible action movies all weekend while attempting to ignore the sudden onset of supernatural puberty.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Dad asks.

What can Stiles say? _All of my friends are werewolves and my instincts are completely out of whack and I’ve accidentally adopted their pack as my hoard? I want to get all of them together in a room and lock them there forever so no one else can ever touch them or talk to them or enjoy their company ever again? Yesterday I unironically called Scott “my precious”?_

“No.” Stiles pulls the blanket over his face.

“Alright. Well.” Dad stands to go, pressing brief kiss to the fleece above Stiles’ head. “Listen, Stiles. I know this is really confusing and difficult. And I sure wish your Mom was here because I have no idea what to expect with this. But I’m here to talk about it if you need to. Okay?”

“Yeah.” Stiles turns the volume up on _Ip Man 3_ as his Dad heads out for work.

He spends the rest of the day wallowing and takes Monday off from school. He plays video games and doesn’t think about anything at all. But there’s only so long Stiles can hide from his problems and by Monday afternoon he’s got about twelve texts from various werewolves asking him where the fuck he is.

Stiles finally decides that he’ll just suck it up and ignore the issue. He can’t collect people, he figures, so he’ll just have to go without hoarding and hope that eventually his lizard (heh) brain fixates on something else.

 

* * *

 

By the time Stiles shows up at Derek’s loft that evening, practically the whole pack has already arrived. There’s no emergency, just Derek’s grudging acceptance that they work together better when they spend time together. There’s a pile of take-out containers on the table, some kind of movie queued up on the TV, and a heap of dirty sneakers by the door.

Stiles’ muscles relax the instant he sees everyone in the same room, wellbeing spreading out from his bones. It’s like stepping into a sauna after a swim or lying down in a comfortable bed after a long day. He reminds himself not to touch anyone but ends up resting a hand on Erica’s shoulder anyway.

Stiles promises himself that he won’t think about pushing everyone into a pile and just _reclining_ on them like some kind of living furniture. He sits neatly on the couch and doesn’t at all change the positions of his friends for maximum magical conductivity, even though it would take only a few adjustments. He tries to ignore the way he suddenly finds Jackson a lot more bearablewhen taken as part of the whole. He _does_ pluck a leaf out of Lydia’s hair when she comes in from outside, but he tells himself that he does it because he’s a good friend and not out of any desire to maintain her condition.

Stiles thinks he has a pretty good handle on himself after three days of pretty epic freak out, but Scott and Derek are both throwing him befuddled looks from their respective seats. There’s a little too much sniffing on both their parts for Stiles to be comfortable.

Halfway through the movie, Stiles gets a text from Scott that says _u ok bro_?, and he forces himself to nod despite the tense and pleasant warmth in his stomach.  

Stiles focuses on his breathing in the hopes that he won’t suddenly spew smoke all over his unsuspecting friends; he has no idea what his long-buried instincts might do next, and the thought of it _freaks him out_.  The magic in the room is heady even though he hasn’t done a thing to encourage it.  Smokelike curls of it rise from the pack, and he can’t help but breathe it in.  Holding his breath only works for a couple minutes before he’s coughing into his sleeve and waving off concerned ‘wolves.  

 _no but u look sort of sick_ Scott texts.

 _I’m fine_ Stiles texts back. He isn’t feeling _sick_ , so much as _overflowing_ _with energy_ and also _a little bit turned on_. Which is frankly gross.

He manages to avoid Scott’s questioning looks for the rest of the night, although it takes a couple of sudden bathroom breaks to avoid an interrogation. Everyone is either crashing or clearing out by the time Stiles allows himself to relax.

Relaxing turns out to be a terrible idea because even though Scott has headed home, there’s still an unsettlingly perceptive werewolf on Stiles’ case.

Derek corners him in the kitchen, and Stiles curses his sudden desire for a glass of water before driving home. He’s got that look on his face that means he’s trying to appear at least a little bit normal, but he still somehow manages to look like he’s seconds away from manslaughter. If his eyebrows get any more crinkly it’ll be murder three.

“Hey buddy!” Stiles keeps his tone as cheerful as possible while resisting the urge to press Derek’s face into a better expression. Touching people on the face is probably one of those things that is frowned upon in polite company. After an entire evening of similar impulses Stiles isn’t even sure.

“Stiles,” Derek says after his custmary long and awkward silence. “Why do you smell pregnant?”

“Well, Derek, I--what?” Stiles blinks in confusion. Huh. That was not the question he had been expecting. “Um. I smell pregnant? How--Derek, why do I smell pregnant?”

Derek shrugs. “You smell,” he waves his hands at Stiles’ body as if that could possibly convey some kind of information, “good. Sort of glowy. Uh, fertile?”

Stiles remembers exactly how little he actually knows about his own species, and how possible it might be for him to possess the kind of biology that could potentially get pregnant, male gentalia and utter lack of sexual experience notwithstanding. It’s not like his Mom’s side of the family had ever hung around long enough to explain their specific version of the birds and the bees. He might be like a fucking seahorse for all he knows.

“I mean, you don’t smell like a woman or anything, it’s just sort of similar . . .” Derek says after Stiles’ horrified silence stretches a little too long. “Obviously you can’t be pregnant.”

“Ha. Ha ha.” Stiles runs a shaking hand through his hair. “Yeah. That’s definitely not possible.”

“You don’t even have a uterus,” Derek informs him grimly, and Stiles can see a lot of frantic herpetology research in his future because he _actually isn’t sure whether or not he has a uterus_. Fuck.

“Uh. Yeah. That’s really weird, dude. You know, I probably spent too much time hanging around Ms. Stevens’s classroom and won’t she be excited to hear the good news? I’d better go tell everyone that we’re going to have a substitute soon because spreading rumors is practically my life’s work. Great talk. Bye!” Stiles books it for his Jeep before anyone can point out he’d skipped school that day, leaving a faintly scowling Derek behind. He has a desperate need to get home and look up reptilian mating habits on Wikipedia.

Three hours of research and an embarrassing hand-and-mirror search for a cloaca later, Stiles feels confident that there is no way he could ever have man-babies. Or man-eggs, as it were. But he has no real answer as to what Derek smelled on him.

He can only assume that it has something to do with the magic. Over the next week and a half it becomes so overwhelming when Stiles is near the pack that he has trouble seeing or hearing what’s going on around him. It collects in his lungs when he’s with them, and he exhales it everywhere he goes for the rest of the day. When he holds his breath he can feel it pushing through his pores and tear ducts, escaping his body but somehow not diluting itself. It envelops him, he breathes it in again, and somehow it only ends up stronger and more _his_.

 

* * *

 

When Stiles is eight, he gets into a fistfight with Jackson Whittemore because Jackson is a stupid dumbface who doesn’t know where babies come from.

Sitting in the principal’s office and waiting for his Mom to come get him is the worst thing in the world, because Stiles has never been to the principal’s office before, and because he’s got dirt and blood on his cheek, and because his mother has to drive all the way back to school even though she’s been feeling extra sick lately.

She’s a little pale and sweaty when Stiles gets in the car with her. And she doesn’t turn the key right away, instead turning to look Stiles in the eye with a very serious and un-Mom-like expression.

“Your principal says that you told Jackson that babies are hatched out of eggs,” Mom says at last, with a little sigh that makes Stiles feel like _the worst_.

“They do though!” he protests. “And Jackson thinks that babies come from a special baby store, which is so wrong, Mom, even _I_ know that it’s a sex thing. He’s _eight_. He’s old enough to know that.”

Mom smiles, but it’s tense enough that Stiles knows she’s all achey. “Stiles. _Kochanie,”_ she says with a laugh in her voice, “you know that you’re a very different kind of person from everyone at your school, right? Because of our Secret Thing?”

Even as Stiles nods it dawns on him that maybe the egg thing was part of Their Secret, and _of course it would be_ because it had to do with Mom and her collection, and it was so stupid of him to forget that. Stiles slumps in his seat and reminds himself that Their Secret makes him cool and special and way better than jerks like Jackson. Even when he feels like everything about him is weird, even when he doesn’t know the sort of easy stuff that normal kids know.

“Jackson was still _wrong_ ,” he says finally.

“Yes, he was,” Mom says, and they head for home. And everything is fine.

 

* * *

  

School becomes an exercise in self-control, and Stiles’ adderall hardly works at all with his new magically enhanced metabolism. He can’t concentrate on anything, too full of energy and conflicting magical tides to even see what’s written on the board, much less comprehend it. The pack is close enough that Stiles can feel each of them tugging on his burgeoning magical reserves. But they’re far enough apart that it feels like grasping at smoke when he tries to reach out to them, and the sensation leaves him feeling queasy and tired.

Scott keeps throwing him weird looks in class and Stiles keeps compulsively checking his skin for stray scales. He hasn’t gone scaly (by accident or on purpose) since he was ten years old, but the past week has been weird enough that Stiles practically expects it. He tries to remember what he used to do as a kid, to keep himself looking normal, but it was too long ago.

His skin stays pink and human, though, and Stiles somehow manages to avoid puking on any of his fellow students. He has a near miss with Harris, but to be honest the guy deserves to get a little vomit on himself, and Stiles refuses to feel bad about it.

The pack convenes at lunch on Friday and Stiles soaks in the happy feelings he gets from everyone being together. The tension he’s been feeling all week just disappears in the presence of the pack. Without his nerves to hold it at bay, the magic comes flooding in, more than it should. The sense-sound-color of it overwhelms him, and before he knows it, Stiles gets a bit . . . drunk.

Jackson throws himself into a chair and snaps, “What are you looking at, Shitlinksi?” and it just makes Stiles feel warm and fuzzy. He can’t stop smiling. He just wants to get them all into a big group hug and never let go. The magic swells in his chest when Lydia gives Isaac a cookie. Stiles has never been in love before, but he’s pretty sure this is what it feels like.

 _These are my werewolves_ , he thinks drunkenly while he sips his chocolate milk. _There are many like them, but these are mine._

“--Stiles!"

“Huh?"

“Dude, what is _up_ with you?” Scott leans in close enough that he can probably smell Stiles’ pores. “You’ve been staring off into space and laughing for like five minutes.”

“Oh? Uh. I’m fine,” Stiles says. “Totally fine, man. Just great. I’m having a really good day?”

Scott has that adorable little crinkle between his eyes that means he’s trying to think. Stiles wants to push on it until it’s smooth again, wants to wrap Scott and the rest of the pack up in matching footie pajamas and just hug them for _hours._ The magic has been uncomfortable and strained the entire day and is now nearly overwhelming. It throbs in time to Stiles’ heartbeat and leaks out of his nose and mouth in curling spirals.

“I just really love you guys?” Stiles is still talking, apparently. “Just. _Scott._ You are the best. Your hair is perfect and I want to touch it _all the time_. And Erica is just really pretty and good at _so many things_ and you guys make--” Stiles tries to figure out how to express the unique color and shape of the magic that fizzes when Scott and Erica touch, “-- _sparkles_.”

Stiles tries to demonstrate the _magical love sparkles_ with his hands but only manages to knock over his chocolate milk and whack Erica in the boob. He watches the milk slowly drip over the edge of the table and does nothing. Stupid floor milk. That’s what it gets for being in his way.

“Are you _high_?” Jackson asks.

“You are an asshole,” Stiles tells him with a fond poke to the cheek. “But I never, like, I never understood _why_. I get it now. Your aura is all red and purple. Shhh--no.” Stiles presses the same fingers against Jackson’s poor, cranky lips. “It’s okay. You’re part of the collection. You’re _perfect_.”

“I’m calling Derek,” Isaac says with a weird intensity. He’s got his phone in his hand and a worried look on his face that Stiles wants to hug away.

“ _Derek_.” Stiles suddenly realizes that Derek _isn’t here_. The whole collection is together, _except for Derek_. “Yes, get Derek! Good idea.” He pats Isaac on the head as a reward. “There’s a hole where Derek should be, I can’t believe I forgot!” And now that Stiles is paying attention, Derek’s absence is a situation that needs immediate attention.

“Should we take him to Deaton?” asks Allison.

“I love your dimples,” Stiles tells her. “I love Derek’s frowny little face. Oh no _I miss him_.”

“We’re taking you to Deaton,” Scott tells him.

“When is Derek getting here?” Stiles is starting to feel sort of like the Thanksgiving when he ate an entire pie by himself. He’s stretched, it’s too much magic too quickly, but even though he feels like he’s going to _pop_ he still wants more. “I don’t want to go to Deaton, I want to fill the Derek-hole.”

“ _Gay_ ,” Jackson hisses under his breath.

Isaac is speaking urgently into his phone but all Stiles can hear are the words “nucking futz” and frequent repetitions of Derek’s name. Lydia rolls her eyes and snaps her purse shut decisively. “Derek is at Dr. Deaton’s,” she informs Stiles sweetly. “You want to see him, right?”

“Right.” Something feels off about the way Lydia is talking. But Lydia is a beautiful mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in perfect hair and all Stiles can think about is _having the whole collection together_.

“Alright then.” Lydia stands up. “You guys go to class, Scott and I will take Stiles to Deaton.”

“He’s just _high_ ,” Jackson grumbles. “Not everything has to do with weird shit.”

“Hmm.” Lydia bends to look Stiles sharply in the eye. “Stiles, are you high?”

“High on _magic_ ,” Stiles replies, because there’s no denying the truth. “You’re _so smart_.”

“There you go,” Lydia snaps. “We’re going to see Deaton.” Stiles admires how the magic swirling around Lydia has turned a purpley-orange color.

“What, you just _believe_ him?” Jackson snorts. “He’s probably on shrooms or something.”

“Wouldn’t we be able to tell if he were on shrooms, though?” Isaac says.

“We’re _going to Deaton’s,_ ” Lydia says. If Lydia were a dragon, she would be breathing fire by now, Stiles muses.

Stiles _is_ a dragon, but he couldn’t breathe fire if he tried. He attempts it but all he gets are a few more wisps of magic. He can’t change his skin or breathe fire and he hasn’t got any wings. There’s no doubt in Siles’ mind that he’s a pretty shitty human and a crap dragon, and if he’s bad at _both_ than what even is the point of Stiles?

All he’s good at is feeling sad about werewolves. “I’m a freak,” he says, suddenly melancholy.

“You got that right,” says Jackson. Scott punches him in the shoulder viciously in response.

“Let’s go,” Lydia says. She and Scott pull Stiles from the cafeteria, one on each side with their arms locked in his like they’re going on a pleasant stroll. He’s too overwhelmed by magic and feelings to tell them that leaving the rest of the pack behind _hurts_.

Stiles is pretty sure that they pass at least three teachers on their way to the parking lot from the cafeteria, but no one stops them. Maybe that has to do with Lydia’s beautiful but intimidating stare, Stiles thinks. Or maybe they say something about taking him to the nurse?

“I think I’m dying,” Stiles informs a passing security guard, but the guy doesn’t seem to comprehend his suffering. Screw that guy.

The farther they get from the pack, the more Stiles feels like his soul is being yanked in several different directions. He whimpers as Scott buckles him into the back seat of Lydia’s car and slides in beside him.

“It’s gonna be okay, buddy,” Scott tells him. “We’re gonna find out whatever happened and fix it, okay?”

Stiles yearns for the rest of his werewolves; they were so close at lunch, and now their distance is tearing him apart. It reminds him of the extensive research he’s done on medieval torture—if the pack ran in four different directions, would it feel like being drawn and quartered? How far would they have to go? Would it hurt him, or just intensify the stretched-taut feeling spreading out from his belly? And what about Wheels or Racks or Iron Maidens—wait. The point is, he’s missing the pack. He wants Isaac and Jackson and Erica and Boyd sitting with him in the tiny back seat of Lydia’s luxury sedan. In a space this small it would be like hotboxing himself with magic.

“Did you touch or eat anything unusual, Stiles?” Lydia snaps from the driver’s seat after making a screeching exit from the parking lot. She seems really tense, and that makes Stiles even more sad. Lydia is great. She’s not a werewolf but she’s really special and she makes his collection better. Lydia makes everything better.

“No?” Stiles slurs. “I ate lunch.”

“Have you encountered any weird creatures or something? Witches?”

“No…” Stiles leans his face on Scott’s shoulder and inhales. He can’t smell the way a werewolf does, but he can still tell that Scott smells good. Smelling Scott makes missing everyone else hurt less.

“What about Peter?” Lydia demands.

“Peter’s a dick,” Stiles says with utmost surety. “I don’t want him in my special werewolf basement. He’s gross.”

“ _Have you seen him recently?”_ Lydia changes lanes with murderous efficiency. Her knuckles are white around the wheel.

“You seem really stressed,” Stiles tells her. They pass a Starbucks, and Stiles wonders if coffee and terrible croissants would help with the festering-wound feeling where his werewolves should be. Or maybe help make Lydia chill out.

“Dude,” Scott says finally, pushing Stiles’ head back a little so he can look him in the eyes. “Did Peter do this to you? Did he, like, drug you or something?”

“Peter? Pssh _no._ ” Stiles smacks a kiss to the side of Scott’s head because Scott is his bro-wolf and he loves him. “Peter isn’t allowed in my pile because he’d make the magic all manky.”

They come to an abrupt halt at the vet clinic, and Scott helps Stiles out of the car without pursuing the Peter question any further. They bang through the front door, and Lydia marches Stiles straight through the deserted waiting area to the exam room Deaton reserves for werewolf emergencies. It’s the smallest room, intended for treating small pets, with a single exam table and one unsteady chair. A poster of a cat on the wall in front of him advises Stiles to “Hang in There”.

Deaton is nowhere to be seen, but the exam room isn’t empty. Derek is sitting on the metal exam table and glaring at his phone like it set his house on fire and murdered his whole family. Stiles frowns at himself for making that joke; that isn’t a cool joke to make even in his own head.

Derek’s head snaps up as they clatter into the room, and his nostrils flare as he takes in their scent. His eyes are shining red in a way that, at any other time, would have Stiles quaking in his converse. Today, however, Derek is _exactly what Stiles needs_.

Stiles only has a couple seconds to think about how much he _loves_ Derek and Derek’s frowny face before he’s being slammed against a wall with 200-plus pounds of snarling werewolf in his face.

Stiles is not mentally prepared for this sudden turn of events.

 

* * *

  

When Stiles is ten years old, his mother dies. Dad and Mrs. McCall and the counselor at school all say “passed away” or “no longer with us,” but Stiles knows that she died and no amount of euphemisms will make her not dead.

Stiles knows the facts: that Mom had cancer. That she had avoided doctors for fear of revealing her unique biology. That she had gone to herbalists and witches and had pulled magic from every crack and crevice to try to fight off the illness. That it wasn’t enough.

But facts don’t help Stiles because his mom is still dead and even being a dragon couldn’t save her.

After the funeral, Stiles goes down to the basement and burrows into Mom’s collection. There are still traces of magic left, sparking from the corner of one frame to another, and the faint scent of Mom’s perfume still lingers. Stiles watches bright red scales fade in and out of the skin of his arm and wonders what the point of being magic is if it can’t protect you from something as stupid and human as _cancer._ Who cares if you can fly or breathe fire or do magic if you can’t use it to help yourself when you need it the most?

Stiles’ Nanna and Grandpa are two hundred years old. His Mom was just 52, and now she’s dead. And Stiles is weird and doesn’t have wings and who knows how long he might live. The thought of living for hundreds of years without his Mom seems-- _impossible_.

Stiles decides that he doesn’t really want to be a dragon after all. He’s not very good at it, and without Mom around to share it with there isn’t much of a point. He can’t even make her collection into more than a pile of useless crap. He not sure he has much love left for any kind of treasure.

Stiles lets his skin be warm and pink. He pushes the scales down deep. He banks the fire, and he lets himself forget that it was ever there to begin with.

It’s better off that way.

 

* * *

 

“What are you?!” There’s nothing to like an angry werewolf to the face to bring you some clarity, Stiles realizes, while counting incisors in Derek’s snarling mouth.

“Uh?!” Those teeth are really impressive. Very sharp. Very close to Stiles’ throat.

“What _are_ you?” Derek repeats, “and what have you done with the real Stiles?” His eyes flash red and there’s a low growl issuing from his chest. He is trying to control himself, if Stiles knows anything about that particular cluster of muscles tensing in his jaw. It would be sort of sexy if it weren’t so completely terrifying. Stiles can feel his thoughts trying to struggle out from under the magical haze swirling around them.

“Derek, what the fuck, man!” Scott shouts. He tries to pry Derek’s hand off Stiles’ throat, but it’s like watching a kitten try to move an elephant. Derek flares his eyes at Scott and _roars_ and Stiles’ best friend is backing off like a kicked puppy. He stands a couple feet away, clutching at Lydia’s hand and saying “ _Dude_ ”.

Derek growls and slams Stiles against the wall again. “You think I can’t _smell you_?”

“Derek, I know you can smell me, dude, you are right up in my face,” Stiles wheezes out. “I’m _me_ , okay? You know me.”

“Listen to him, Derek.” Lydia’s grip on Scott’s hand is tight, but her voice is as steady and commanding as ever. “Stiles needs your help.”

“ _Stiles_ doesn’t smell like a freaking _atom bomb’s worth_ of magic,” Derek snaps. “I’ve been smelling it all week, but it’s stronger now and it _isn’t human_. I don’t know what you are, but Stiles is as human as they come, and you are definitely _not_.”

“Derek, that’s why we brought him here!” Scott shouts. “He’s cursed or something, you gotta _help_ him, not maul him!”

“This isn’t Stiles!” Derek shouts back. His hand tightens on Stiles’ throat and the magic trapped in Stiles’ chest starts to bubble with fear.

Stiles is beginning to feel genuinely concerned for his wellbeing because there’s a heavy werewolf hand blocking off his airway and everyone is _shouting_ and most of his treasure is walking about on its own halfway across town. Things are very confusing, everything is happening very fast, and Derek’s aura is a sickening puce-red that pulses with anger.

With a rush of adrenaline, the magic that has been bottled up tight in Stiles’ core flows into the rest his body. Instead of it making him happy and drunk, it fizzes down his limbs, more like lightning than the fuzzy nimbus he’s gotten used to. He inhales as much more magic as he can, feeling it shoot from his center into his arms and legs, where it is suddenly incredibly useful. His head clears enough that he can grasp exactly what is going on for probably the first time all day. And Stiles is suddenly a lot less high and a lot more _furious_.

“Okay, get the fuck _off_ me!” Somehow Stiles manages to get his arms up between himself and Derek’s chest and he _pushes_ with muscles and magic.

It’s enough to send Derek flying across the room, although that’s not saying much. The room is tiny, the kind that’s meant to hold a single freaked-out dog and maybe a human handler without much more space to move around. Lydia screams and pushes herself into a corner as Derek tumbles backward over the exam table and into a glass cupboard full of supplies, landing amidst a shower of syringes and tongue depressors.

“Jesus Christ,” Stiles wheezes, rubbing at his throat with a hand that is a lot _sharper_ than it was a few minutes ago. “Whatever happened to using our words?”

“Holy shit,” Lydia says, and she’s staring at Stiles like he grew another head or something. And Scott says “ _Dude_ ” with a look on his face like Stiles just ate the last of his cocoa pebbles. Which Stiles would never do because Scott is his bro.

“What?” Stiles feels a tingle of magic travel down his arm, and he shakes it to get rid of the excess energy. “What are you looking at?”

“Stiles,” Lydia breathes, and that is definitely a little bit of fear in her voice, “I think you might be a dinosaur.”

Stiles looks down at his arm, and for the first time since his mom died, he sees bright red scaled skin and sharp black talons. Well, fuck. There’s no telling what his face looks like right now. The lizard is well and truly out of the bag.

Stiles just manages to say, “Come on, Lydia, everyone knows that dinosaurs had feathers,” before Derek is back on his feet, leaping over the exam table, and slamming into Stiles at full speed.

More vet equipment crashes to the floor and Stiles’ head slams back against the wall, hard enough to crunch the awful tan plaster. He kicks out at Derek’s stomach and gets as much distance as he can in such a small room, but there isn’t even a moment to breathe before Derek is back, swiping at him with a handful of furious werewolf claws.

The uplifting cat poster dies an honorable death as Stiles somehow manages to duck under his swing. He tries not to think too hard about how how his knees aren't bending in the same direction they used to.

There’s no way to avoid Derek in here, though, and Stiles isn’t even sure he wants to. For the first time in his entire life he has the strength to actually hold his own when they tangle. His magic has been building in the days and weeks since he first realized that the pack was going to be _his thing_ , and now it’s finally been unleashed from his inner reservoir. The magic flows through his body into his muscles and it makes him strong. Strong enough to kick Derek across the room with one oddly-jointed leg.

Stiles had always thought that being able to fight off a werewolf would make him feel--powerful, or superior. But watching Derek--his friend? His _something_ , anyway--crash through the exam table doesn’t make him feel strong or victorious or even proud. He just feels sort of nauseated.

Derek hits the wall with a _crack_ and leaves a faintly humanoid indentation before falling to the ground. The exam table is beyond recovery, and Lydia and Scott are both plastered against the wall as far from danger as they can get.

Silence falls, save for Stiles’ heavy breathing and Scott’s occasional muttered “Dude”. Derek remains sprawled on the floor, either genuinely wounded by Stiles’ sudden strength or simply holding back until he can find an opening. The trickle of blood down the side of his head makes Stiles think it’s probably the former.

For one tiny moment, Stiles has the urge to ruin Derek just because he can. He can feel the fire in his chest, a power nothing like werewolf strength. He could burn Derek to ash so easily.

But even when he’s trying to turn Stiles into fleshy ribbons, Derek is still _his_ , and that feeling easily overwhelms Stiles’ appetite for destruction. Derek’s loss would hurt more than any werewolf-inflicted wounds, and his collection would never recover. Even though he laid Derek out on the clinic’s floor in self-defense, the knowledge that he was responsible for those slowly-healing wounds—it’s the worst.

“I realize this looks pretty bad.” Stiles gestures at all of himself, realizing that his scaliness has spread down his legs and that his toe-claws have ruined a perfectly good pair of sneakers. “But I’m _me_. Derek. I am. I don’t know how to convince you but I am one hundred percent Stiles Stilinski.”

Derek’s eyes are still flaring red, but he seems to have given up trying to maul Stiles to death, at least for the moment. He pushes himself to his feet and braces himself against the wall, still reeling a bit from his injuries. “Start by telling me what _this_ is.” He waves his hands at all of Stiles.

“Okay. Yeah, I can do that. I mean you guys sort of have to believe me because you can see it, and also, you’re _werewolves_. Keep that in mind, okay? Glass houses and everything.”

“Talk,” Derek says with a snarl.

Stiles swallows and tears his gaze away from Derek’s loud and threatening eyebrows. Lydia and Scott are both still glued to the wall, eyes wide. He tries not to notice the state of the exam table and that they’ve ruined what is likely hundreds of dollars worth of medical equipment. Stiles breathes in carefully, and he feels another pulse of magic—fight or not, Derek and Scott and (to a lesser extent) Lydia still belong to him.

He locks eyes with Derek again and spits out, “I’m a dragon. Half-dragon. Mostly dragon? Much of me is dragon.”

“ _What_?” Scott looks between Stiles and Derek with the saddest puppy face of all. “You’re a dragon? Dragons are real and you _are_ one? Dude!”

Stiles shrugs. “Yep.” Talking is suddenly much harder because even though he’s _fucking said it,_ the anxiety is still there. And so is the sudden desire to go home and bury himself in Mom’s hoard and never talk to another person for as long as he lives. Nearly seventeen years of keeping Their Secret and Stiles has finally let it out. It should be a relief, but mostly he just feels shaky and a bit like throwing up.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Scott’s voice wavers. Stiles just wants to _hug_ him, but there are some huge talons and a very upset werewolf in the intervening space.

“I dunno. It wasn’t that important. I couldn’t even get my skin to change a week ago, Scott. I thought it was going to be _years_ before I had to think about this stuff.” Stiles doesn’t mention the pervasive fear of being discovered, a fear so deeply ingrained that he hadn’t even considered telling his _werewolf_ best friend that he wasn’t entirely human.

There’s a lot of freaking out about this in Stiles’ future. He can tell. But he’s still coming down from the magic-high (and what the fuck had _that_ been?) and all that’s left in him is a shocked numbness. Stiles only hopes he’s somewhere safe and quiet when the inevitable panic attack hits. Somewhere other than a half-destroyed exam room that, now that he thinks about it, smells like wet dog.

“If you’ve been a _dragon_ this whole time why do you smell like that now? What changed?” Derek says ‘dragon’ like other people might say "trans fats" or "New Jersey".

“Uh. Puberty? I mean. I’ve been going through some-- _changes_ recently. Involving magic. And being a mythical flying lizard.” Although Stiles can tell that despite the obvious changes to his hands and skin (and jeez, what must his face look like?), he is still completely free of wings.

“Wow. Cool,” Scott breathes. He looks like Christmas just came early.

“ _Rude._ ” Lydia socks Scott in the shoulder, but he shrugs her off cheerily.

“What? It’s cool. You are so cool,” Scott says to Stiles with a grin.

Stiles grins back tentatively and reaches up to run a shaking hand through his hair, only to find that he has significantly less hair than expected and significantly more armored plating. His talons squeak against heavy scales and what might be some kind of head-ridge. Maybe there’s still hope for flying once he can get a handle on the whole changing-shape thing; he doesn’t even know how far the partial shift goes.

“We still don’t know if you’re telling the truth,” Derek grumbles. “You smell different.”

“That’s all the magic, man!” Stiles tells him. It’s suddenly incredibly important that Derek believes him, that Stiles hasn’t irrevocably lost his trust. “There’s so much of the stuff it’s leaking through my skin. Look, you can hear my heartbeat right? I’m not lying!”

Derek frowns, but it seems that his limited repertoire of responses has left him unprepared for this situation. Apparently he’s convinced enough for the time being, though, based on his continued lack of violence. Lydia seems to be shifting quickly from horrified awe into burning curiosity, which doesn’t bode well for the future of Stiles’ dignity.

“So now that I’m not high as honor and Derek isn’t convinced I’m a replicant, do you think I could go home and have my panic attack about revealing my biggest and darkest secret to basically everyone I know? I’d rather not do that here.”

There is a tense moment where Stiles is convinced that Derek is going to leap at him again. Or maybe Scott and Lydia will decide that Stiles is no longer deserving of their support and protection. He is sure that their tentative truce will fall apart; somehow, it can’t be as easy as just telling them all the truth. It’s as though the room is holding its breath, waiting to see how the dice will fall.

In the midst of the standoff, the cheerful kitten poster makes a final dramatic leap to the floor. Stiles can’t help but snort out a laugh, which quickly becomes helpless giggling. Scott and Lydia join in, faintly hysterical, and even Derek relaxes a bit. He doesn’t make a sound, but Stiles can definitely see some amusement in his eyebrows right after Stiles gasps, “Hang in there, bro,” through his own laughter.

“We’re going to Derek’s, and we’re getting ice cream on the way,” Lydia commands after catching her breath. “We can talk about it as a pack once everyone gets there.” She waits for Derek to agree after a barely-present acknowledgement of his status as Alpha.

Stiles breathes a sigh of relief when Derek nods sharply. He’d rather go home, but he’ll take ice cream and a pack meeting over violence and an extended stay at the vet clinic any day.

They locate a cat hair-infested blanket in one of the supply cupboards and drape it over Stiles’ head before tiptoeing out through the back door. Stiles is thankful that they manage to sneak away before Deaton shows up and yells at them about wrecking his exam room. They can see Deaton locking his car as they pull out of the parking lot, and Stiles hopes he can come up with some excuse to avoid the inevitable fallout. They’ll blame it on Scott; he’s a bro, he’ll take the fall.

By the time they get to Lydia’s favorite ice cream parlor, Stiles has managed to will himself back to human shape. He rewards himself with two scoops of rum raisin and tries not to think about talking to the rest of the pack later. He focuses on making sure nothing drips past his fingers and ignores both Scott’s rabidly curious stare and Derek’s suspicious scowl. The scowl clashes terribly/goes poorly with his kiddie scoop of mint chip.

Lydia fills the silence for the entire drive to Derek’s loft with small talk and pointedly ignores absolutely everything to do with their afternoon. She runs out of words by the time they get to Derek’s, though, and they shuffle into the loft in silence.

Stiles carefully doesn’t think about the trouble he’s going to be in for skipping, or how he’s going to explain the whole _hoarding people_ thing to a bunch of kids who can hardly grasp the purpose of their own wolf pack. He tries to imagine the evening as anything but his own inevitable and particularly-messy execution.

The Secret is out now, and there is no going back.

 

* * *

 

Stiles is eleven years old when he gets sent to the principal’s office for the second time, and they call his dad in to collect him. His father presses at the dark circles under his eyes while he listens to what the principal has to say, nodding along with things like “teacher conference” and “unhealthy fantasies” and “sorry for your loss”. Dad doesn’t say much, but he does take the card that the principal hands him and nods again when she says something about counseling.

Stiles tries not to talk for the entire tense ride home, but the words are bubbling in his chest, and by the time Dad sits him down at the kitchen table for the obligatory shame-cocoa he’s squirming with the discomfort of not _saying what happened_. “I’m sorry.” Stiles figures it’s the best way to start. “I am really, really sorry and I know I should have just kept my mouth shut.”

Dad breathes out long and slow and rubs his hands across his face like he can somehow wipe away all the stress that Stiles causes. “You wrote a five-page report on how you are a dragon. Stiles, what were you _thinking_?”

“I _am_ a dragon!” Stiles points out. “It was a family history project, what was I supposed to do?”

“You were supposed to _lie!_ ” Dad shouts, loud enough to make Stiles flinch in surprise. “I’ve always told you to be as honest as you can be, but this is one of those times when telling the truth is just going to get us all sent to the nuthouse! Jesus Christ, Stiles!”

Stiles says, “I’m sorry!” because that’s all he can think to say. He doesn’t even really know why he _did_ it. He’d just wanted to so badly; he’d thought about it every time the teacher mentioned their family history reports. The impulse to just _tell_ was tantalizing, and before he’d really thought about it, he was handing the whole thing in. And then arguing with his teacher about how real it was. The arguing was probably where things got out of control.

“Mrs. Harrison might have brushed it off as a joke but then you had to go and insist that it was _real_? Your principal said that you tried to _show_ her? Why the hell would you do that?”

“It didn’t work anyway,” Stiles tells him sullenly. “I tried to show her my scales and they wouldn’t show.”

“Well, we can be thankful for that at least!” Dad rubs at his face again and Stiles feels like the world’s biggest disappointment. It’s a feeling he’s been having a lot recently.

There’s a long silence where Stiles drinks his cocoa and tries not to cry, and Dad visibly centers himself, breathing deep.

“I know you miss your mom,” Dad says at last. He doesn’t say anything about how much _he_ misses Mom. He almost never talks about Mom at all. “I understand why you did your project on your--your heritage. But maybe it’s for the best that you’re stuck in plain old human shape, huh?”

“Uh-huh,” Stiles says with a sigh. It’s not like there are doctors for dragon-problems anyway. He doesn’t even want to be able to do any of that stuff any more, he’s pretty sure.

“I’ll iron stuff out with Mrs. Harrison; you won’t have to go to therapy. Okay?”

Stiles thinks that maybe therapy would be a good idea, for him and his dad both. But eleven-year-olds aren’t supposed to think that kind of stuff, so he keeps his mouth shut.

 

* * *

 

After fifteen minutes in the loft, it becomes obvious that Derek is impatient to recommence the interrogation of the century. However, Stiles is so exhausted he can barely keep his eyes open. His magic high has long worn off (and boy is he excited to _never have that happen again_ ), and everything is starting to ache. He feels like a deflated balloon.

“Can you have a magic hangover?” Stiles mumbles as Scott helps him stretch out on Derek’s couch. “Is that a thing?”

“No idea!” Scott responds cheerfully, and much, much too loudly. “We should look that up.”

Stiles hides his head under and throw pillow and groans. “Stop being happy.”

“Won’t.” Scott pats him gently on the arm, and Stiles can feel magic arc between them like a static shock.

“Are we going to talk about this or what?” Derek snaps from somewhere above Stiles’ head.

“We’re going to wait until everyone else shows up,” Scott says. “Besides, Stiles is obviously about to pass out.”

Derek rumbles unhappily. “He still smells like a magic-reactor. It’s-- I don’t like it.”

“I don’t smell anything,” Scott shrugs. “And now we know he hasn’t been, like, taken over by an alien or something. It’s only going to be a couple of hours until the rest of the pack gets here. It can wait.”

“I should tell you guys the things, though,” says Stiles, voice muffled by the pillow. “Because I accidentally made you my collection and now I can’t stop and I don’t think I’m supposed to hoard things that can walk away.”

“Go to sleep,” Lydia commands from the kitchenette. “Nobody can understand a word you’re saying.”

“I _am_ going to sleep!” Stiles shouts back. Or he thinks that’s what he shouts. He wants to explain himself better; he needs to tell them about how much he wants to _keep_ them, about how he will let them leave even if it feels like cutting off his limbs.

He drifts off instead.

Stiles dreams of curling up in the middle of his mother’s hoard with the soft wall of her body tucked around him, protecting him from the sharp edges of the picture frames. He can feel her heartbeat and the thrum of magic around the two of them, making them stronger and safer. But unlike every time they had done this in Stiles’ childhood, the magic in the dream soaks in, snuggling through his skin and bones until there is no distinction between Stiles and the magic at all.

Stiles wakes up feeling like he’s been rolled in dough and put into an oven to bake. It takes him a minute to realize that someone has nestled him gently in the center of a werewolf cuddle-pile. The cushion from the couch is still under his head, but the couch itself is several feet away.

After he’s disentangled himself from a very threatening blanket that had gotten draped over his head, Stiles can see that the lone table has been filled with sodas, there is a cake shaped vaguely like a cartoon dragon, and someone has strung a banner above the loft’s big windows.

WE LOVE YOU ~~JACKSON~~ STILES (EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE A LIZARD) the banner proclaims in shaky red block letters. Stiles remembers it from their post-kanima celebration. He also remembers telling Erica that it was the most hideous thing he’d ever seen and that she should burn it. He’s almost glad that she didn’t. Looking at that horrible fucking banner makes something warm and tight twinge in Stiles’ chest.

The twinge is echoed by slow and steady pulse of magic that presses against all of his senses now that the pack is together. He can feel it accumulating in his center, similar to the way it had when it triggered his embarrassing euphoria, only steadier. It feels as easy and comfortable as breathing, nothing like the frantic inhalations he’d been making earlier. And some deep-down instinct says that he should let the magic be, not touch it for anything, because soon enough he’s going to want to fly.

That same whatever-it-is in Stiles’ brain that told him the pack was _his_ is assuring him that he’ll be able to do it. Not now, not just yet, but soon enough. He’ll just-- _push_ \--and he’ll be high above the cloud line, where there will be no one to see his human form fall away.

But for now he can just bask in the feeling of his ‘wolves, each of them piled on on top of the others in perfect harmony. Almost perfect harmony. He pushes Jackson’s leg to the left and the magic swells like a wave on a calm sea. Nice.

“I’m sorry.” Derek is still awake, apparently, and speaking just loudly enough to be heard without disturbing anyone else. “I-- overreacted. Earlier.”

Stiles smiles, because Derek is as snugly connected as the rest of them, just as vital to the hoard and the pack as every one of the others, and because he’s never heard that particular phrase come out of Derek’s mouth. “It’s cool,” he replies. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

Stiles can feel Derek shrug. “Are you-- okay?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. It’s surprisingly true. He cranes his neck to look at Derek, at the eyes that a few hours ago were murder-eyes and now are something like worried. “I’ve let a whole bunch of people in on my biggest secret, and I accidentally imprinted on all of you like a baby duck. I can’t help but think of you as a living, breathing collection of shiny rocks. And I think if I tried hard enough I could probably breath fire? But I’m okay.”

Derek’s grunts thoughtfully. “You imprinted on us?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s why you smell so much more like pack, and magic?”

“I guess? I can’t smell that stuff, it’s more like a… sound-color-thing? You can smell that?”

Derek actually smiles at that, and it’s weird and good all at once. “You’re pack, Stiles. You’re-- _more_ pack than before. That’s good.”

“It’s good?” Stiles can feel a swelling in his heart that has nothing to do with magic, or dragons, and it warms him right down to his toes.

“Yeah.”

“It’s all _great_ , will you shut the fuck up and go back to sleep?” Isaac mumbles from the puppy hoard. Stiles can’t stop smiling as he tucks himself more comfortably against Scott and closes his eyes.

He’s not looking when Derek finally relaxes and shuts his eyes, but he can feel the magic ripple and _settle_ in a way that it hasn’t done before. Stiles knows it means everyone is together, and comfortable, and it’s more perfect than anything he has ever experienced.

Sort of like placing the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Sort of like falling in love.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Credit where credit is due: the concept for this fic was inspired by the artwork of [iguanamouth](http://lizardshuffle.tumblr.com/tagged/hoards) on tumblr.
> 
> Many hours of cheerleading and a disgusting amount of editing on the part of [Alisa](http://mockturtle8.tumblr.com) made this fic possible. She is quite possibly the best beta on the entire internet. Check that lady out.


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